I don’t know if it was rumours that he was a full-blown child rapist, just that he was a strange man who acted oddly around young women. The kind of stuff that was obviously horribly commonplace in showbiz in the 1970s (and beyond no doubt), but his actions went well beyond that.

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oooh you’re hard

This is an interesting watch, where Hislop talks about the difference between hearing rumours and knowing something was really wrong:

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I think in bbc and probably media in general the rumours were well known. My old boss’s wife has worked in bbc for years, one of the rumours was that he was procuring young boys for an old prime minister and hence could get away with it.

Louis asks Savile why he told the press that he ‘hates children.’

Savile said something along the lines of it helps to stop the rumours.

Louis was like ‘err doesn’t that make it sound like you have something to hide?’

Savile dismisses it and starts yawning/singing to himself to stop the conversation.

I think that was the only time in the original doc that it came up.

I watched the original on Sunday before the new one aired and he says something along the lines of ‘how do they (the press) know if I am (a paedo) or not? I know I’m not’. Pretty horrible.

Was there a funny bit on a cruise ship at the end?

That’s one of those lines I wonder about a bit. Is he straight up just lying or does he actually believe it in some way himself or does he think he charity or something more than compensates for the peado thing. Where did you watch the original?

About a third of the way in Lonz. He shows off to Louis about having a penthouse cabin and that there’s only 2 and he pities the other person with the penthouse as it’s not as nice as his. Then the captain and a few crew turn up and Louis asks them about Jimmy’s penthouse only for the captain to say ‘there aren’t any penthouses on this floor, they’re about 4 floors up’.

Remember the brass eye (possibly day today) sketch about Saville dying and the only thing that people were sorry about was that he didn’t suffer more? That was a response to the rumours too surely, wasn’t it?

Oh yes, that was it.

Streamed it off the interwebs fopps. Do we know if he ever stopped being a paedo? Maybe in his head if he hadn’t been ‘practising’ (for want of a better word) he didn’t think of himself as a paedo anymore? Who knows man!

Seems from the documentary he saw himself as an ‘opportunist’ rather than a paedophile.

Was a really horrendous watch.

But that’s exactly where there’s a gap between “Man is obviously weird” and “Man is involved in high-up paedo conspiracy”, that allowed him to get away with it.

Fucking hell. I did not know that.

Something that has been a little missed as well is the possibility Saville’s connections were actively helping him because they were paedophiles as well. I know Theroux’s documentary was being specific, but there’s a strong possibility Saville was aided by people who knew what he was doing. Such as those nicked in Operation Yewtree, but there could be a lot of people who won’t ever be held accountable.

For example the ex-mayor for Scarborough, Peter Jaconelli. He died before the Saville stuff became known but they were friends and apparently in it together. The Jaconellis are a family in Scarborough that have owned a lot of business including an ice cream shop on the beach. The (young) staff there would joke about how they shouldn’t lean over the counters… If he was still alive he’d be facing many allegations of child abuse.

Also been rumoured Jaconelli, other local politicians, and some members of the richer business orientated families were part of a paedophile ring. You would think that would result in the local newspaper investigating, but these people effectively own the paper.

I hadn’t really thought about it like that, but I think there are some good points. I thought the focus on women in the doc was trying to allow their voices to be heard, but yep, I think there should have been more scrutiny on the men who were working with him or at the BBC.

But there’s probably also a good reason why there was no access to any of the men who worked with him tbh.

Just watched it and he also says ‘it’s worked a treat’ in stopping the press pursuing the rumours.

It was 75 mins. There was plenty he could have got into I agree but as a piece which works as a companion to the original programme I thought it was fascinating.

watched this last night, some pretty grim viewing. almost in tears at the end with that women talking about savile and her grandfather, jesus christ.